“We must ensure that investment in mental health does not remain a slogan but becomes a reality, based on resources of both body and spirit. This is a national mission, saving lives in the broadest sense.” – Michal Herzog, the president’s wife, at the National Mental Health Conference, September 30, 2025.

That call from Michal Herzog has stayed with me. It defines where Israel stands today.

Three weeks after the return of the hostages, the country is breathing again, yet the wound is far from healed.

The 2024 Mental Health Division Report, presented at the same conference, paints a stark picture. PTSD rates have nearly doubled to around 61% among those directly exposed to attacks.

More than 100,000 Israelis have begun PTSD treatment since October 7, most suffering from prolonged stress. One in five Israelis reports increased dependence on medication or alcohol.

And 2025 is not over yet. The brief but searing 12-day Iran-Israel War in June has already deepened the national trauma.

At the same time, international experts are warning of the long-term impact. Prof. Yuval Neria, head of the Post-Trauma Research and Treatment Program at Columbia University, cautioned that “it may take a hundred years to process October 7.”

A decorated veteran of the Yom Kippur War, Neria predicts that Israel could face as many as one million post-trauma cases, stressing that “the country cannot heal without rescuing these multitudes of wounded souls.”

I heard the same urgency much closer to home. In the Negev, a senior rehabilitation specialist told me something I cannot forget: “An IDF reservist today can wait six months in Ashdod for a first appointment with a rehabilitation physician, three months in Beersheba at best.”

For someone trying to return to work, to parenting, or to sleep, those months are an eternity. This is the landscape in which we are asking communities to rebuild and professionals to keep standing.

Resilience in motion

This is why the way we organize care matters as much as care itself. In the fragile weeks surrounding the hostages’ return, Mahut Israel, a leading resilience organization, moved quickly.

“The deal for the return of the hostages activated us deeply across the communities,” said Yael Shapira, Mahut’s CEO.

“We convened a guidance Zoom at sunrise. More than 110 therapists and social workers joined to receive insights and direction from Miriam Shapira, an expert on trauma and bereavement, on how to prepare for meetings with residents of the Gaza envelope.”

Yael described faces filling the screen, with eyes carrying weight and purpose.

Participants asked how to help people hold relief and grief at once, how to face survivor’s guilt, and how to steady classrooms and clinics.

“The work of resilience does not end with the hostages’ return,” she said. “Community resilience is a continuous process. We have been with them from day one, and we remain beside them now.”

From vision to practice

Founded in 1989, Mahut, meaning “essence,” has become a national framework for trauma preparedness. 

Working with the Israel Trauma Coalition, government ministries, and local municipalities, Mahut trains welfare teams, school leaders, and emergency responders to lead with emotional awareness.

“When a mayor, principal, or team leader recognizes the emotional reality of their people, the entire community becomes more stable,” Miriam Shapira, Mahut’s founder and clinical psychologist, told me.

In recent webinars, she named what many feel: “a deep exhaustion that lives in the body when the psyche can no longer scream.” The task, she says, is to find hope inside that exhaustion.

Finding hope is not abstract. In the western Negev, communities are facing an ongoing complex reality: two years of evacuation, war, and the long fight to bring the hostages home, alongside attempts to restore routine.

Can they celebrate? Has trust returned? Not yet. This is a phase Israel has never known, and the way to thrive is with the support of those who intimately know the communities and how to ignite and hold on to a sense of hope.

Recognizing the unseen

Mahut’s initiative “Family Circle – We See You” meets the second and third circles of trauma, the families of survivors, victims, and hostages. Developed with the Jewish Agency, Bituach Leumi, and the Fund for Victims of Terror, it centers on recognition and the power of a supporting peer group.

“Our mission is to let people feel seen,” said Michal Leizerovitch, Mahut’s director of organizational development.

“Especially mothers and relatives who carry their families’ pain in silence. They deserve acknowledgment for what they carry.” In many cases, being seen is where healing begins.

From local roots to global reach

Through the Israel Trauma Coalition, Mahut’s approach has been shared internationally, from training clinicians in France after the 2015 Paris attacks to supporting resilience centers in Ukraine. 

Yet its core mission remains local: to help Israeli communities where remembrance and rebuilding are the same project.

The numbers tell a hard story, but behind them are people I meet every week: a teacher who still flinches at loud noises, a reservist counting months until care, and a child who draws homes with bomb shelters as the main feature.

If we want to remain a society that can defend itself and also prosper, mental health recovery must be treated as national infrastructure, not charity.

Mahut’s model shows a path: local leadership trained to recognize emotional reality, circles that restore dignity, rituals that anchor belonging, and an ethic that says recovery begins now, not after the crisis is over.

As Michal Herzog put it – this is a national mission in the broadest sense.

Allocate resources, shorten waiting times, expand community programs, and train municipal leadership nationwide. Recovery is measurable. It should begin with national and professional recognition and with the budgets to match.

The writer, a photojournalist, has returned to Sderot, where he focuses on the Gaza border communities as a global hub of resilience and innovation, documenting how recovery efforts and civic leadership are shaping the region’s future.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR